The drug industry employs bags made of flexible material, and each normally comprising an injection conduit and a feed conduit, which project from one edge of the bag to inject a drug into the bag, and to draw the drug from the bag respectively.
Bags of this sort are normally used on automatic drug manufacturing machines comprising a pocket store with a number of pockets, each for receiving and retaining a respective bag; a metering station for producing a drug inside each bag; and a grip-and-carry device for transferring the bags between the pocket store and the metering station.
To attach the bag to the pocket store and grip it using the grip-and-carry device, the bag is associated with a gripper comprising two contoured, substantially flat jaws, which are shorter in height than the injection and feed conduits, and are hinged to each other to rotate with respect to each other between a grip position gripping the injection and feed conduits, and a release position.
The gripper being designed to only grip the bag at one end, the bag is free to swing as it is being transferred by the grip-and-carry device. As a result, the bag is subject to shock and possible damage, the grip-and-carry device is forced to operate at a relatively slow travelling speed, and the bag takes a relatively long time to stabilize for operations such as weighing, thus resulting in relatively long operating cycles and relatively low output of known automatic machines of the type described.